While America Aged
How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The retirement crisis facing America-and the road map for a way out-from The New York Times bestselling author of Origins of the Crash
In the last several decades, corporations and local governments made ruinous pension and healthcare promises to American workers. With these now coming due, they threaten to destroy twenty-first- century America's hopes for a comfortable retirement. With his trademark narrative panache, bestselling author Roger Lowenstein analyzes three fascinating case studies-General Motors, the New York City subway system, and the city of San Diego-each an object lesson and a compelling historical saga that illuminates how the pension crisis developed. Cumulative retirement deficits are approaching $1 trillion, and Lowenstein warns that these are only the first. Retirement pensions will continue to be a critical issue as the country ages, and While America Aged is the urgent call to action and prescription for reform.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reports on pension insecurity, union battles and financial instability are unsettling stuff. Which makes it all the more worthwhile that Michael McConnohie reads Lowenstein's front-line report on pension squabbles in American urban outposts. McConnohie, who sounds like NBC anchor Brian Williams with a bit more gravel in his throat, renders the story of aging workers and how to support them with stern authority. If at times McConnohie is so stentorian as to sound like he has been carved out of granite, he does a solid job of underscoring the seriousness of the problems that Lowenstein investigates. Listening to him is like taking in a particularly in-depth audio version of the nightly news. A Penguin hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 17).